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Saturday, February 12, 2011

Second Hand Saturday! A Book-A-Week-Giveaway #37!

(If you've been here before, scroll down for this week's challenge in red)

Welcome toSecond Hand Saturday!! In an attempt to clear our bookshelves, and pass on great used books to our stalkers followers, Amy, Kit, Abigaile, Austin and I have decided to hold weekly giveaways of some of the books on our bookshelves! Every Saturday, we will post the books available, and the following Saturday, we will announce the winner and our next challenge. The winner will get to choose a book from the list and we will ship it to that lucky person! Each week we will have a different challenge to complete (see below). YOU MUST BE A FOLLOWER TO ENTER! Open Internationally. Ends at 10:00 pm EST the following Friday!

I'm going to be a contrarian here and say that I don't want to see any more books made into movies, for two reasons:

First, Hollywood has been relying heavily on sequels, reboots and adaptations for years. What I'd really like to see is something creative--something that wasn't anything else before it became a film.

Second, I like the idea of books being allowed to take on a life of their own in readers' imagination--and even the collective cultural imagination--before we impress everyone with a very definite interpretation of it that might put a "creative" twist on the source material. And I'm cynical about books becoming movies so soon after they become best-sellers. Hollywood could be a bit more subtle about the desire to make a quick buck rather than a classic, I think!

I'm with Enbrethiliel on that: no more movies ruining books please! And may the ones coming (Hunger Games, Vampire Academy and Mortal Instruments) be well done movies. But if I could choose some actor for playing Dimitri on Vampire Academy would be Ben Barnes! :)

PS: this question reminded me of a t-shirt I saw with the message "Movies: ruining the book since 1920"!

I think it's weird when series become movies, so some stand alone books I've read recently that would make good movies include Brenna Yovanoff's The Replacement, Mindi Scott's Freefall, or Rachel Cohn & David Levithan's Dash & Lily's Book of Dares. I could so see Dash & Lily as a Christmas/holiday movie for teens highlighting Christmas in New York. :)

I'm having a tough time choosing between Nightshade and Personal Demons. If I have to pick one, I would go with Nightshade by Andrea Creamer. I LOVE the book. I think it would definitely be a great movie. We've seen vampire movies, now it's time for werewolves!!!

I know they made a B-movie out of Madeline L'Engel's, "A Wrinkle in Time," but not good enough. They need to redo it with 2011 technology. Casting, I'm not familiar enough with the young stars to know who to play Meg or Charles Wallace, but they could cast some great witches in Carol Burnett, Shirley McLane, or Jane Fonda.

I'm still hoping to see Maximum Ride series by James Patterson on the big or small screen. and Scott Westerfeld's Uglies - they were supposed to be made into movies, but then the economic crisis came...:(All the other ones that I like (Fallen, Linger and VA series) are already being made into movies, yay!I try not to think about casting though, as I don't want to be disappointed about it when the movies are finally made, so I'll let them surprise me:)

Ender's Game was an exciting book, but you will probably never see it as a movie because Orson Scott Card has ticked off too many people with his total lack of tolerance to gays. He has made his conservative views quite well known to the point of offending many people with blunt and disgusting bigotry. His books won't survive the liberal Hollywood environment because the people in charge of making movies can't stand him as a person!

I would love to see A Great and Terrible Beauty by Libba Bray go onto the Big Screen! Apparently there were supposed to make it into a movie, but then it got canceled :( I have no idea, who could play who, but I think Emma Roberts could totally play Ann! Like...kinda-ish. I dunno. Maybe?